It was dismaying to learn the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday shot down a challenge[2] to a law enabling the government to spy on its citizens in secret.

The trouble is, the plaintiffs couldn’t prove they were spied on.

One might argue that’s because the spying was, well, secret. But that apparently wasn’t enough to persuade a majority of justices to address the constitutionality of a 2008 broadening of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act[3], or FISA.

Joseph Heller, author of the classic novel “Catch-22,” could hardly have imagined a plot so absurd and canted against the civil rights of ordinary people whose e-mails and calls are likely being monitored by the government.

Think about it: You know the government is conducting wide-ranging, warrantless searches of communication involving at least one party on foreign soil. You suspect your communications are being captured in the dragnet, but you’re not sure. Since the information is being collected for intelligence purposes — not prosecution where it likely eventually would become public — how can you ever know?

Yet, there’s no denying that the issue of standing is one that cannot be glossed over. It means that a plaintiff must have a personal stake in the outcome of the dispute. Without such a test, the government might be overrun by lawsuits filed for ideological reasons or just for the heck of it.

As we said, it’s a Catch-22. A double bind. A no-win situation.

The fear of plaintiffs that their communications were being intercepted was too speculative, according to the decision, written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

According to a New York Times story [5]about the decision, it means that this provision of FISA probably will never be reviewed by the high court.